


Day 28. Star

by Munnin



Series: Fictober [28]
Category: Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Order 66
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 09:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16426763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: Djarrah tries to deal with the future he's seen for the Jedi Order, and his place in it.





	Day 28. Star

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re just joining in, I urge you to read the [whole series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1145777) from the beginning. Some of these stories read fine alone but they’re all part of a larger interwoven plot.

I went back to the Jedi three times. 

The first to fight in the war and gather what information I could. I doubted the Jedi Council would believe me without proof. There were little things, signs something was wrong. But my place in the war was so small, I could see so little of what was going on beyond the battle at hand. Gel, ever faithful, agreed to be my eyes, my ears; collecting stories from other clones of strange happenings. His network of brothers stretched further than mine as day by day, I felt my connection to the Jedi Order weaken. 

To them, I was a spear, to be thrown at their enemies. I had no more control of my direction than does the spear once it is loosed. 

Battle after battle, death after death. Like waves pounding a beach. There was no clarity in victory. Or ground that could be held in any meaningful way. 

I helped Gel bury the last members of the Fire-Riders. Their lives lost without gain of any kind.

In disgust, I went home and once again set myself to meditation. In the hope I would understand why the Force would show me what I could not change. 

The second time was when I felt a star go dim in the night’s sky. Master Ralin’s heart had given out, her spirit returning to the Force. 

Despite her ailing health and desire to see out her days at the Temple, she had been off-world when it had happened, guiding a group of younglings through their crystal trial. So many other guardians had been enlisted into the war, leaving her to shoulder the weight of a new generation’s training. 

I landed just moments after she breathed her last, the frightened children gathered around her. They looked at me with awe and fear as I strode to her side. Master Djarrah of the Ghost Arm. To them I was a story, told to them by their ancient guardian. Like something out of a holo-drama.

I brought them home to the temple, as she would have wished.

But every fibre of my being railed against it. 

I had seen their fates – their fear, their suffering. 

I longed to bring them back to my world. To any world but Coruscant. To see them raised with love and hope, and safety from the coming storm. The storm I alone could feel.

But if I took them, how would I have been better than the one who had taken me?

I carried her body to the Tower of Transition, and built her pyre with my own hands. She deserved better. She deserved peace. Not to die on some distant world surrounded by children she was not permitted to love. 

In my grief, I returned to my world. To mourn her in my own way, as I knew the Jedi would not permit 

The third and last time I returned, it was to face the Council. 

I was out of favour for not coming when they called. For turning my back on the war to spend time on my own world. For choosing my people and my land over the fate of the galaxy. 

I tried to tell them what I had seen, what I had felt. To warn them of the coming danger. 

For all my words, they didn’t hear me. 

Even as I stood before them, I felt the fire on my face, the blood under my boots. But they felt nothing. 

They claimed I had turned down a dark path, that connection had blinded me to duty. 

The opposite was true. 

Connection to family had made me value love.   
Connection to tribe had made me value kinship.  
Connection to home had made me value freedom.

All of this had made it clearer to me that the Jedi Order valued nothing but itself. 

Hollow idolatry of an empty institution. 

The Order had become a husk of itself, built of tradition but without substance, without heart. Ideals too enclosed, too entrenched to amount to anything but a fortress of sand. 

And now the tide was turning.

Standing in the centre of their circle, I laid my sabre at my feet. With the butt of my spear I broke it open and took out the shard of green kyber. 

The colour leached from it as I lifted it from the shattered hilt, becoming as clear as the first time I touched it during my trials, all those years ago. 

I knew in that moment I no longer belonged to the Jedi. 

I held it up to Coruscant’s dying light, the kyber turned red in my hand, seeming to confirm the darkness the Council saw in me.

But it was not the red of a broken or bleeding crystal. 

It was the red of the Iron Trees. The red of my skin, laced from within with the copper of my blood. 

I no longer belonged to the Jedi Order. I belonged to the land. And to the people of my birth. 

I left the temple without looking back. 

The Jedi would burn, with or without me. As sure as the turn of the tide. 

Sometimes balance meant letting everything fall. To wipe the ground clean to begin again.

***

When the time came, I howled with pain and grief. As much as I had put them behind me, I felt the death of each and every Jedi like a cut to my own flesh. My people held me as I screamed into the empty night. The stars had gone out and the sky was nothing but blackness. 

Or so it seemed to my eyes. 

It wasn’t till the next dusk, till I had cried myself hoarse for every youngling and padawan, every knight and master, that I saw light again. 

Two stars, paired as twins on the horizon, resting there as if gathering strength for their journey.

And in that moment, I knew hope had been reborn.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much, Josh!


End file.
